I'm 41, not young by any means, but when it comes to tools, I hate the "old style stuff". I grew up with IDEs, and I find working with these archaic editors a total waste of my time. I don't want to spend 3 weeks trying to get vim or emacs or sublime text or atom to do the same things that Visual Studio, LiteIDE (the IDE I use for Go) and QT Creator do after 2 seconds I finish to install them.

I have no interest in writing makefiles, no interest in remembering the correct spelling of my functions or what the hell is the 4th parameters in an API call... when it comes to write code, I need all the help I can get from technology, cause what I do is already complicated enough, no need to shoot myself in the balls... and I am not willing to trade that for the chance to feel like the "cool dude" when it comes to write on the forums "I use Vim/Emacs".

I'm 43, grew up with old-style editing, and have no intention whatsoever of going back to it. I understand and recognise the huge productivity boost that using a really good IDE gives, and it's nothing to do with organising a project file or autocompletion (which many old-style fans misrepresent as being the sole purpose of an IDE, and then go on to make spurious claims that it makes programmers lazy: as if the ability to memorize API and syntax was the only important thing).

The acronym is the giveaway: Integrated Development Environment. Being able to launch builds and debugs from the same tool used to edit, being able to set breakpoints and inspect variables directly in your editor; these are all things that I guess if you've never had you don't see the value of, but once you're properly exposed to them you'll wonder how you ever managed before.

Your post kind of reminds me of THIS rant.

I assume that you failed to see that the 'rant' as you call it was very tongue-in-cheek?

Written in 1983 by Ed Post and published in Datamation.

I am aware it's a parody, however it does quite nicely illustrate a point .

Most of the non-vim users in this thread act as if people who use vim are afraid to change or hate to use other tools. I, personally, used Visual Studio, PTVS, and Sublime Text (each for around two years) before switching to vim around a month ago. It's not that I don't like change or that I'm stuck in old times. I just find myself highly productive with Vim, and thus I'm using it. If another editor comes along which I find myself more productive in, I'll switch to that. To be honest, all of you guys are sounding very condescending and pretentious with your generalization of Vim users.

For those that say Vim's interface is archaic and such, I suggest you look at Neovim.

Don't think I choose to use vim on all the platforms I program for because I'm compensating for a lack of security in my manhood or because I'm apparently much older than most of you and unable to change my ways. I have used most IDEs over the decades, and none of them meet my needs. I could see gaining productivity advantages if I were to limit my work to a single project and a single platform at a time, but that is not a description of what I do for a living nor what I do for a hobby.

As it stands, vim is the only development environment I have used that works across every single platform I've developed for (including phones), is the only one that works nicely over ssh, is small enough and lightweight enough that it will run (and even install) on some of the smaller devices I play with, and is fast enough to start and shutdown that I could have opened/edited/saved/closed a file while most of the monstrosity IDEs are still displaying their splash screen (I'm looking Eclipse straight in the eye here). It's smaller cousins are always available on any POSIX system, even a fresh install, so no need to switch keybinding muscle memory.

I'm not trying to convert anybody. I'm just not impressed by proselytizers who feel their lack of familiarity with a tool or workflow is best explained by a flaw in that tool or workflow, and that their personal level of familiarity with another tool is the best reason for everyone to switch to it. That sounds to me more like personal self-affirmation than reasoned argument. that's the realm of religion, not engineering.

I don't care what the editor is. So long as it has syntax highlighting I'm fine. I use command line to do everything else under Linux and don't use Windows much anymore. Just old habits I suppose.

This is exactly how I felt up until I started really making an effort to learn the commands of the editors I was using (starting with Sublime). It's hard to explain, but I'll just say that if you spend a week really learning the ins and outs of your specific editor, you'll see your productivity increase hugely.